In the Preface to his "Leaves of Grass," Walt Whitman wrote: "The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." His words have shown true for himself, as Whitman's influence is felt everywhere in American poetry. Even one hundred years after "Leaves of Gras
"Nothing is worse," Nietzsche once said, "than the smell of an ill-constituted soul." For this professor of Classics and son of a Protestant minister, things were not hidden, there were no secrets: the world revealed itself. From this base of materialism and realism, Nietzsche assaulted Christianity,